Google tries a route around Chinese Web censorship

A worker cleans the sign in front of Google China headquarters in Beijing, Monday, March 22, 2010. Google Inc. will shift its search engine for China off the mainland and maintain other operations in the country. It's an attempt to balance its stance against censorship with its desire to profit from an explosively growing Internet market. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
— AP

A worker cleans the sign in front of Google China headquarters in Beijing, Monday, March 22, 2010. Google Inc. will shift its search engine for China off the mainland and maintain other operations in the country. It's an attempt to balance its stance against censorship with its desire to profit from an explosively growing Internet market. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
/ AP

SAN FRANCISCO 
Google Inc. will shift its search engine for China off the mainland but won't shut it down altogether and will maintain other operations in the country. The maneuver attempts to balance Google's disdain for China's Internet censorship rules with its desire to profit from an explosively growing market.

On Monday afternoon, visitors to Google.cn were being redirected to Google's Chinese-language service based in Hong Kong. Google does not censor those results, but Chinese government filters can still restrict the results that are seen by mainland audiences.

The Hong Kong page heralded the shift with this announcement: "Welcome to Google Search in China's new home." The site also began displaying search results in the simplified Chinese characters that are used in mainland China.

Google's move comes after a 2 1/2-month impasse pitting the world's most powerful Internet company against the government of the world's most populous country.

Google plans to keep its engineering and sales offices in China so it can keep a technological toehold in the country and continue to sell ads for the Chinese-language version of its search engine in the U.S. The company, based in Mountain View, Calif., also intends to keep its mapping and music services on Google.cn.

But Google is still taking a financial risk. The revolt against censorship threatens to crimp Google's growth, particularly if taking the stand prompts the Chinese government to retaliate by making it more difficult for the company to do business in the country.

Google set up a search engine inside China in 2006, even though that meant complying with rules requiring the omission of search results the government deemed subversive or pornographic. Google's pages for China noted that some results had been excluded. But the complicity sparked widespread criticism among Google supporters, including some of its own employees, who believed the company was violating its "Don't Be Evil" motto.

Then on Jan. 12, the search company vowed to shake loose from government-imposed restraints on the Internet. It said it was no longer comfortable playing by the rules after it determined that Google and more than 20 other U.S. companies had been targeted in computer hacking attacks originating from China.

The attackers also tried to pry into the e-mail of human rights activists opposed to the ruling party's policies, according to Google. That raised the specter that the Chinese government or its agents played a role in the espionage, although Google never made a direct accusation.

Despite its outrage, Google had hoped to persuade the Chinese government to let it run a search engine that could deliver unrestricted results. Failing that, Google wanted to find enough common ground to maintain its research center and sales team in the country.

It's unclear whether Google's attempt to skirt China's censorship rules by using Hong Kong as a back door will provoke more acrimony. China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not issue an immediate comment early Tuesday in Beijing.

"Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard," David Drummond, Google's top lawyer, wrote in a Monday blog posting. "We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement."